---

We are writing to invite proposals for presentation to our combined format open panel at the next 4S conference on the topic of {Techno} magic and crafting digital artifacts.

Magic is a material and bodily practice deeply intertwined with labor, resistance and social reproduction. In the context of historical exploitative economic and political structures, magic was not merely symbolic, but a form of embodied knowledge and practice that directly resisted the rationalizing forces of early capitalism. {Techno}magic is framed as an emergent field where ritualistic practices, talismans, sigils, and other magical materia intersect with technologic artifacts, fostering more-than-Western views and histories to enact knowledge construction and relations of care through local networks and federated circles. This panel explores how magic can guide the crafting of artifacts, tools and systems that reconnect us to invisible realms—spiritual, emotional and communal–– through personal mythologies and speculative world-building.

We invite artists, designers, STS scholars, researchers and practitioners to submit proposals for workshops, performances, and experimental practices that expand on these ideas. How can digital technologies harness the enchantment and transformative potential of magic? How can rituals rooted in bodily practice shape new forms of technological interaction? Submissions should aim to explore these questions through embodied, participatory experiences, contributing to a growing discourse on technology as a medium for the sacred.

We envision a combined open panel format which will include, but is not limited to, academic paper presentations, hands-on activities such as workshoping avatars as talismans, crafting hyper-local genAI as oracles, playing with mystical alphabets or ideating techno-mythical creatures.

Conference Theme: Reverberations

To reverberate is to echo, to repeat, to transmit further, to convey. Reverberations are also relays—wave-like, rolling, seismic or subtle—between points in space and time, felt evidence of distant yet interpenetrating events. In this sense, to reverberate is to exhibit a strange kind of force—an infinite regress of effects perceived as causes perceived as effects. For STS, reverberation figures science and technology not only as an effect of myriad practices and multiple agencies but also as normative sites where diverse politics and disparate struggles are resounded, reworked, and—consequentially—reactivated.

Note: While there is no fee for submission, there is a conference fee for all the panel members who present their work.

Opportunity Website

---

ConferenceMagicProposalsWorkshop